NBA: Sixers' offense vanishes in loss to Clippers

PHILADELPHIA — There was a hush in the first quarter, with the arena having gone silent, when one voice was heard above the others. A fan wearing a 76ers T-shirt wasn’t holding a clipboard. He didn’t have a whistle around his neck, either. But at that moment, he was a coach.

“Stop taking jump shots!” the guy shouted toward the court.

It seemed everybody was listening to the unnamed man … except his intended targets. Shot after shot went up. Few went down.

Monday, the Sixers ran into a team that favors running as much as they do. The track meet didn’t work in their favor, as the Los Angeles Clippers ran roughshod over the Sixers, 94-83, at Wells Fargo Center.

The Sixers (7-15), who have lost four in a row and 11 of 13 overall, missed their first 13 looks from the 3-point line. They needed a third-quarter Tony Wroten triple from the left side to snap an ugly oh-fer streak from long range. Overall, they shot 35.8 percent from the floor (33-for-92) and 14.2 percent from 3-point range (3-for-21).

“Offensively, our shots weren’t falling,” said Wroten, who had nine points, 10 rebounds and seven assists. “When you play a good team like that, you better come through with something. We have to shoot better from the 3-point line, also.”

The Sixers, who average 103 points per game, have been held in double digits for three straight games, a stretch over which they’re only shooting 18.8 percent from 3-point range.

Whatever flow the Sixers’ offense usually has, it had a direct path off the floor like that third-quarter shot by Brandon Davies — the one Los Angeles’ Blake Griffin rejected into the third row.

The Clippers’ Chris Paul had a hand in 23 of his team’s 35 buckets, with 25 points and 13 assists.

“He’s one of the best point guards in the league,” Wroten said of Paul. “You can’t just shut him down. You have to contain him. I tried my best.”

Griffin added 26 points and eight rebounds for the Clippers, while the Sixers got 25 points and eight boards from Evan Turner.

The scant crowd of 12,355 missed out on the chance to see a delightful matchup of skillful point guards, with Michael Carter-Williams missing his third straight game with an infected right knee. Without Carter-Williams, the Sixers had no answer for Paul.

Against a similarly swift team, the Sixers struggled in the half-court offensive sets they were forced into running.

“We have to help our young guys get developed better on making shots and finishing. And we have to set better screens, we have to execute better,” Sixers coach Brett Brown said. “We have to do everything a little harder, we have to do everything a little bit better. We have to go into it with the understanding you’re not just going to plunk it down and watch Kevin Durant break it down and shoot it and score, or put it into Blake (Griffin) and let him jump over the world.”

It was the kind of night in which one of the Clippers (14-8) — DeAndre Jordan — had the words “Los Angeles” ripped off the front of his jersey, yet no one in the arena had any trouble discerning which team the athletic, above-the-rim forward played for.

Outside of the game’s first basket, the Sixers never held the lead. They trailed by as many as 21, in the earliest stages of the third quarter, and looked out of sorts throughout.

Wroten had a remarkable, 50-foot baseball pass over Evan Turner’s shoulder that even Eagles quarterback Michael Vick — who was in the building — had to admire. Turner turned the pass into a 3-point play, which cut the Clippers’ once-12-point lead to three. Outside of that and his team’s 11-2 spurt that nearly eroded Los Angeles’ lead, the second quarter was forgettable. The Clippers led, 44-36, at halftime.

Out of the break, Los Angeles scored the first 11 points in a span of three-and-a-half minutes. The Sixers, looking baffled, found themselves down by 21 points. They never recovered.

The fourth quarter only epitomized the Sixers’ game-long struggle against the Clippers.

The Sixers assembled an 11-4 run in the first 5 minutes, 45 seconds of the final period when Turner, from 10 feet out, hoisted a contested jumper in the lane. He didn’t get the call and he let official Pat Fraher know he wasn’t happy about it. All the while, Los Angeles’ Jared Dudley was permitted to score a clear-path basket without any defensive attention from the only player at that end of the floor — Turner.

“I went to follow Willie Green and on the opposite side was, I don’t know his name,” Turner said of Fraher. “I got irritated from, what I was taught was always let the shooter come down. On eight or nine shots, I didn’t have an opportunity to come down. I was getting my arm hit. So I just got frustrated for a play. That’s all.”

That was all from Turner, yes. But was it all from the Sixers’ offense? Maybe not.

“We’ve been emphasizing defense so much,” said the Sixers’ Spencer Hawes. “We’ve been playing better games there, and sometimes it comes at the expense of things on offense.”